After my last glossary post on LoRa, I thought I'd write another one of C&sharp; and .NET, as (in typical Microsoft fashion it would seem), they're seems to be a lot of jargon floating around whose meaning is not always obvious.

If you're new to C&sharp; and the .NET ecosystems, I wouldn't recommend tackling all of this at once - especially the bottom ~3 definitions - with those in particular there's a lot to get your head around.

C&sharp;

C&sharp; is an object-oriented programming language that was invented by Microsoft. It's cross-platform, and is usually written in an IDE (Integrated Development Environment), which has a deeper understanding of the code you write than a regular text editor. IDEs include Visual Studio (for Windows) and MonoDevelop (for everyone else).

Solution

A Solution (sometimes referred to as a Visual Studio Solution) is the top-level definition of a project, contained in a file ending in .sln. Each solution may contain one or more Project Files (not to be confused with the project you're working on itself), each of which gets compiled into a single binary. Each project may have its own dependencies too: whether they be a core standard library, another project, or a NuGet package.

Project

A project contains your code, and sits 1 level down from a solution file. Normally, a solution file will sit in the root directory of your repository, and the projects will each have their own sub-folders.

While each project has a single output file (be that a .dll class library or a standalone .exe executable), a project may have multiple dependencies - leading to many files in the build output folder.

The build process and dependency definitions for a project are defined in the .csproj file. This file is written in XML, and can be edited to perform advanced build steps, should you need to do something that the GUI of your IDE doesn't support. I've blogged about the structuring of this file before (see here, and also a bit more here), should you find yourself curious.

CIL

Known as Common Intermediate Language, CIL is the binary format that C&sharp; (also Visual Basic and F&sharp; code) code gets compiled into. From here, the .NET runtime (on Windows) or Mono (on macOS, Linux, etc.) can execute it to run the compiled project.

MSBuild

The build system for Solutions and Projects. It reads a .sln or .csproj (there are others for different languages, but I won't list them here) file and executes the defined build instructions.

.NET Framework

The .NET Framework is the standard library of C&sharp; it provides practically everything you'll need to perform most common tasks. It does not provide a framework for constructing GUIs and Graphical Interfaces. You can browse the API reference over at the official .NET API Browser.

WPF

The Windows Presentation Foundation is a Windows-only GUI framework. Powered by XAML (eXtensible Application Markup Language) definitions of what the GUI should look like, it provides everything you need to create a native-looking GUI on Windows.

It does not work on macOS and Linux. To create a cross-platform program that works on all 3 operating systems, you'll need to use an alternative GUI framework, such as XWT or Gtk# (also: Glade). A more complete list of cross-platform frameworks can be found here. It's worth noting that Windows Forms, although a tempting option, aren't as flexible as the other options listed here.

C&sharp; 7

The 7th version of the C&sharp; language specification. This includes the syntax of the language, but not the .NET Framework itself.

.NET Standard

A specification of the .NET Framework, but not the C&sharp; Language. As of the time of typing, the latest version is 2.0, although version 1.6 is commonly used too. The intention here is the improve cross-platform portability of .NET programs by defining a specification for a subset of the full .NET Framework standard library that all platforms will always be able to use. This includes Android and iOS through the use of Xamarin.

Note that all .NET Standard projects are class libraries. In order to create an executable, you'll have to add an additional Project to your Solution that references your .NET Standard class library.

ASP.NET

A web framework for .NET-based programming languages (in our case C&sharp;). Allows you to write C&sharp; code to handle HTTP (and now WebSockets) requests in a similar manner to PHP, but different in that your code still needs compiling. Compiled code is then managed by a web server IIS web server (on Windows).

With the release of .NET Core, ASP.NET is now obsolete.

.NET Core

Coming in 2 versions so far (1.0 and 2.0), .NET Core is the replacement for ASP.NET (though this is not its exclusive purpose). As far as I understand it, .NET Core is a modular runtime that allows programs targeting it to run multiple platforms. Such programs can either be ASP.NET Core, or a Universal Windows Platform application for the Windows Store.

This question and answer appears to have the best explanation I've found so far. In particular, the displayed diagram is very helpful:

....along with the pair of official "Introducing" blog posts that I've included in the Sources and Further Reading section below.

Conclusion

We've looked at some of the confusing terminology in the .NET ecosystems, and examined each of them in turn. We started by defining and untangling the process by which your C&sharp; code is compiled and run, and then moved on to the different variants and specifications related to the .NET Framework and C&sharp;.

As always, this is a starting point - not an ending point! I'd recommend doing some additional reading and experimentation to figure out all the details.

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